Proposal:

I want to extend my MA theses, by getting some audience data, primarily to see who engages in different kinds of information dissemination on the Internet. Information dissemination as I want to conceptualize is people disseminating general information, writing mails, mailing ‘links’ of web pages that provides information, sending the web page with information itself, or e-mail news articles (I am mostly interested in this).

The second part of the study would try to measure the predictors or antecedents that lead to information dissemination, especially what makes people to e-mail links of web pages and e-mail news articles that they find on news web sites.

The theoretical argument is, people who are self-efficacious, have a high desirability of control, high self-esteem, have a large social network, online as well as offline would be primary information disseminators of general information as well as of news articles to others.

I think this seems to be beyond the scope of the class; however, I can start with the literature review, building up the argument for the study, thus providing the theoretical base. I hope to move beyond this to conceptualizing, explication concepts, dimensions, writing down various indicators, and hopefully coming up with certain definite items to be included in the survey.

Somehow try to answer, why and what kind of people e-mail news articles and disseminate information?